Post A Picture of Your Last Purchase

[AlienALX]

Weren't you buying Ryzen before it came out any way?

All I will say is get em in lad. Once you get involved with that lady of yours you won't be doing stuff like that again

 

[AngryGoldfish]

Ryzen before women.

 

[AlienALX]

Man, it's strange how things happen sometimes ! As you lot know, when I built Dianoga (my Area 51 R2) I water cooled the CPU. I did it on the cheap, pump has been superb. Any way, I always wanted to water cool the Fury X. However, there was a huge dilemma. Water blocks for Fury X are prohibitively expensive. We're talking £120+. They have dropped to £90 or so recently, but that includes no back plate and they are £30.

I was poking around on Ebay yesterday and typed in Fury X waterblock. One came up (literally two on there) and was in the same town I live in. Few messages back and forth, he literally lived 250m from my house.

£35 all in. Yup, thirty five quid. It was a two minute walk lmao.

Earlier on today I was poking around on OCUK and had a dig through their water cooling parts. This was before I had even found the block. Any way, they had 8 of these in stock.

8/11mm which is fine because it's the same sort of thickness it uses now. £1.99 each !! they are £18 on Watercooling !!

So with the block and fittings all sorted I noticed this.

Which was on clearance for £1.99. My initial plan was to sell it and the fittings and make some cash (I could have easily quadrupled the price of those Bitspower fittings and made a few quid). However, what I did not know was that it would turn out to be quite prophetic. If you followed my Dianoga build you will remember I used a single bay res with a Chinese pump, but fitted a double bay res front cover to it.

So now I can basically stack the reservoirs and fit that red cover. Top half of the window will monitor the CPU res, bottom half will monitor the GPU res. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I bought this too.

With the pump, as above.

For £20 all in.

All I need now is a rad, and I am in no hurry for that. Oh yeah, bought this too for £1.69 from WCUK lmao.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

Damn, that is some haul. One of my closer friends is like that. He always seems to find these absolutely amazing deals.

 

[AlienALX]

Damn, that is some haul. One of my closer friends is like that. He always seems to find these absolutely amazing deals.

Thing is fella I never find these deals Ever.

It was going to be a very bitter pill to swallow given I will probably just equal the stock cooling too. End of the day pump + same size rad wasn't going to change the cooling much.

So I have been putting it off for ages.

Just need to find a rad now. Not in any hurry though. I think I have some green coolant, which even though would go against the colour theme as it sits I think it would look kinda cool.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

I wish the Fury X was air cooled. This has brought up all my old feelings. Ha!

 

[AlienALX]

I wish the Fury X was air cooled. This has brought up all my old feelings. Ha!

If it was then the blocks would have been cheaper IMO. And larger, too. Which is kinda nuts. I don't know why they were so expensive, maybe because they knew they would sell less so had to recoup the R&D costs somehow?

Thing is over the past three months all I have used really is my Fury X unless I am doing VR. And it's been flawless since AMD changed the drivers to sort out the VRAM limit. So I just don't feel like replacing it..

 

[AngryGoldfish]

If it was then the blocks would have been cheaper IMO. And larger, too. Which is kinda nuts. I don't know why they were so expensive, maybe because they knew they would sell less so had to recoup the R&D costs somehow?

Thing is over the past three months all I have used really is my Fury X unless I am doing VR. And it's been flawless since AMD changed the drivers to sort out the VRAM limit. So I just don't feel like replacing it..

I imagine that R&D for waterblocks is indeed quite high in comparison to production, which once you have the machining should be manageable. So yeah, it could be that the Fury X sold so poorly that they had to charge a lot for them to recoup their expenditure. Then again, they didn't have to make any other Fury X waterblock iterations unlike the 980 and 980ti where they had to make ones for ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, Zotac, etc. EK made a block for the Nano, Fury X, and ASUS Strix Fury. That's all I remember seeing from them. That reduces cost because you don't have to keep changing the code for the machines or have more machines working.

If the Fury X had been $600 in an air cooled version, it would have been so much better. Just those small changes would have made up for the memory and comparatively lacklustre DX11 performance.

 

[AlienALX]

Yeah for sure it must cost money and time to scan a GPU and make a block that fits it perfectly. There is a sod load of copper on the block too, because it has to cover the entire card.

I opened it earlier. He obviously takes care of his gear like I do mine because the back plate is like brand new without a single mark and the block too is pristine with all of the screws, TIM and even the single back plate adapter (that costs about £20 on its own FFS).

Just short a rad now. Been looking, couple took my fancy. That will have to wait, but I can do plenty in the mean time once I have recased my NAS and set that up

 

[g0ggles1994]

Good lord AlienALX that is an impressive haul

I'm with you on the cost of GPU water blocks, I'd love to do a full custom loop but the cost makes my eyes water. I'm not jealous at all...

 

[AlienALX]

Good lord AlienALX that is an impressive haul

I'm with you on the cost of GPU water blocks, I'd love to do a full custom loop but the cost makes my eyes water. I'm not jealous at all...

Yup it's ridiculous how much it costs tbh. When I built the CPU loop I spent a grand total of £120 which I thought was bloody cheap. The CPU block (a black EK, which is kinda spooky thinking about it) was £23 on Ebay and I got the rad on clearance for £43. I then got the fittings for £2.50 each, again down from about £15 each. So even with all of those massive savings it still came to £120, even using a £10 Chinese pump.

If I had paid new prices for the block and fittings I just bought I would be in for £300 already. That's without the rad/res which is around another £50 etc.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

Yeah, I spec'ed out a bare essential but still very nice loop and I couldn't get it below €700 with EK components. It actually hovered around €800 with all the extra little bits and bobs like tubing, coolant, thermal paste, etc. Maybe if you bought from various different vendors you might be able to get it below €700, but it's just not worth it to me. I keep trying to find a way to get into proper water cooling for less money, but the prices are too damn high.

 

[AlienALX]

Yeah, I spec'ed out a bare essential but still very nice loop and I couldn't get it below €700 with EK components. It actually hovered around €800 with all the extra little bits and bobs like tubing, coolant, thermal paste, etc. Maybe if you bought from various different vendors you might be able to get it below €700, but it's just not worth it to me. I keep trying to find a way to get into proper water cooling for less money, but the prices are too damn high.

It's tough. Fittings are the toughest part tbh. Once you have those you can really use your cunning to get the rest. That pump I bought for Riff Tamson cost me £10.29 from China. I took it apart and the pump shaft and bearing are actually ceramic. So I have no concerns about those wearing out, and the motor seems to be strong. It's a little awkward to set it up due to the 90' way it's laid out (instead of parallel in/out) but other than that it's a fantastic pump.

When I built Dianoga I managed to find fittings at rock bottom prices, so long as you were prepared to use 19mm hose which is enormous. I picked up three four packs of Monsoon Chainguns for £9.99 each. Those packs were like £60 before, IIRC they are nearly £20 per fitting. It's that part that catches you out.

Rads? they are dirt cheap. Have a look at Mayhem's rads. They are enormous and very well priced. Sadly they don't do 120mm so I need to look elsewhere for my Fury X.

But yeah, if you can find a deal on fittings? grab them. They are hands down THE most expensive part of a loop.

I got notification yesterday evening that the 8 BP fittings I bought for £15.98 had shipped. Elated tbh, have spent less than £80 so far for pump, res, fittings, hose and block/plate.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

It's tough. Fittings are the toughest part tbh. Once you have those you can really use your cunning to get the rest. That pump I bought for Riff Tamson cost me £10.29 from China. I took it apart and the pump shaft and bearing are actually ceramic. So I have no concerns about those wearing out, and the motor seems to be strong. It's a little awkward to set it up due to the 90' way it's laid out (instead of parallel in/out) but other than that it's a fantastic pump.

When I built Dianoga I managed to find fittings at rock bottom prices, so long as you were prepared to use 19mm hose which is enormous. I picked up three four packs of Monsoon Chainguns for £9.99 each. Those packs were like £60 before, IIRC they are nearly £20 per fitting. It's that part that catches you out.

Rads? they are dirt cheap. Have a look at Mayhem's rads. They are enormous and very well priced. Sadly they don't do 120mm so I need to look elsewhere for my Fury X.

But yeah, if you can find a deal on fittings? grab them. They are hands down THE most expensive part of a loop.

I got notification yesterday evening that the 8 BP fittings I bought for £15.98 had shipped. Elated tbh, have spent less than £80 so far for pump, res, fittings, hose and block/plate.

Water blocks are pretty expensive too. I think my fittings would come out at about €200 while an EK block for CPU and GPU would be about €230. Radiators would be about €160 for high-end cooling and quite a bit less for the minimum (360mm total for CPU and GPU). Fans add up as well. If you went with something like the new Corsair models, you could be paying upwards of €100 just for fans.

I think if I were to water cool, I'd do it properly. I have no reason to water cool for temperatures. I live in Ireland for goodness sake! Water cooling would be for fun, silence, and aesthetics. If I cheaped out it would lose either silence or aesthetics or both. The loop would then just be for the sake of it and slightly lower GPU temperatures, something that makes very little difference for Pascal. Not sure about Vega obviously, but water cooling my Fury would have been pointless. It overclocked like a potato. I couldn't even reach the frequencies of a stock Fury X. 1000Mhz is about it. I've never heard of a GPU with no factory overclocks that couldn't hit even an additional 50Mhz on the core.

I was so disappointed with my Fury that I lost interest in overclocking entirely. My previous GTX 970 was not much better. My Fire Strike scores were considerably lower than what others were getting at the same clock speeds. Folks told me it's because I was throttling. They suggested I modified my BIOS to stabilise my frequencies and remove GPU Boost. I spent weeks tweaking that bugger to stop throttling by the 13Mhz they seemed to think meant something and what did I gain from it? Nothing. I wasn't throttling by 13Mhz any more, but my scores did not improve. Maxwell and likely other architectures aren't tied to clock speeds alone. There are many other variables to factor in. One GTX 970 at 1500Mhz is not going to score the same as another in a different system with different RAM, different storage device, different version of Windows, etc., even with the same CPU.

I flashed my original BIOS and quick messing with that nonsense. BIOS modding when performing basic overclocks is for e-peen measuring and little more. 'Oh, look, I'm not throttling by 13Mhz. I spent hours working on my voltage table for that. I'm a pro overclocker, yo.'

 

[AlienALX]

I've never been really that disappointed with my Fury X TBH. When I first bought it I got it four or five days after release (some guy bought it to review, or rather slag off AMD because he is a Nvidiot) and then sold it to me for £430. I did not have the £550 the 980ti cost so I was happy with that. And it performed really well, right up to the point where the new console slop started filtering through (like COD BLOPS III, ROTTR etc). I was really mad at that point, because if the 4gb was breached the PC would BSOD, freeze for 30 seconds before continuing or just plain reboot.

That was when I gave up on the card pretty much and bought the Titan XM I have in another rig. However, lately? I have gamed some pretty serious hours on it without any issues whatsoever. There's a video released on Youtube last week where the guy benches it now and it's better than ever. Sure, if the VRAM breach occurs you lose around 30% in performance (because it caches from your HDD) but it remains smooth. The good part though is that in DX12 and Vulkan it beats the 1070.

I've also learned to turn settings down a bit so it's pretty much still a very good card.

You won't gain anything peformance wise from it by water cooling it with real water of course. I know that much tbh. It's crap card for overclocking. However, the aim here is to get it on a loop with a 7v fan. That is what I am paying for.

Honestly, in this day and age people do not water cool for performance or great temps. There are far cheaper ways to do that with an AIO, and besides, hardware is becoming far more frugal with power and less about packing heat. It's only really extreme cases where you need water (like if you want to get crazy clocks out of a 1080ti) but an AIO would easily suffice..

Me? I've pretty much seen that going water means low RPM fans at 7v. Which means whisper quiet, and in one case virtually silent (my 8 core Xeon is on a 240 rad with 600 RPM fans... They are inaudible over hard drives spinning for example).

You can find plenty of bargains around. Water cooling gear sells for a fraction of what it costs new. Just be sure to buy a block that is just a block with a plate for the socket. That way you can just buy an adapter for a tenner when you switch platforms and keep your block.

GPU blocks are definitely the biggest bone of contention though. They are hideously expensive, practically worthless once they get old* and the GPU is the thing people switch out the most as they come out so often that it's a PITA.

* I have seen water cooled cards actually fetch less than they are worth with crap air coolers on. People water cooling want the latest and greatest, not old cards that they will have to spend time and money putting into their loops. That is why I meticulously label and keep every single last screw and the stock cooler. Otherwise? they can be a real anchor.

 

[AngryGoldfish]

Thing is, you can also get away with 600-800RPM system fans with air cooling in the right chassis with sensible air flow. The GPU then becomes the loudest component, however even it can be tamed with a custom fan curve if you don't mind sacrificing a little performance. The recent slew of 1080Ti's for example, they're below 70°C. That's fantastic performance leaving a lot of room for tweaking. If you don't mind the GPU hovering at around 78°C, which we know the GPU is rated for, while you may lose 40Mhz in boost it'll be as quiet as water cooling at a fraction of the cost and without the hassle.

I'm quite contented with my Fury. It does what I need it to do. It's just a terrible overclocker. Even when Afterburner released voltage control and memory overclocking, it still just would not budge. Fiji didn't scale that well with clock speeds anyway so it's no big deal. I've not seen a Fury overclocked to the same performance as a Fury X, while a R9 290 could be pushed to 290X levels, a GTX 970 could be pushed to a 980, and a 980ti could be pushed past a Titan XM.

 

[Dicehunter]

Well not getting a small form factor build anymore for ease of transport to the states as I managed to get a nice deal on shipping my stuff over in a very well cushioned container ergo I bought myself the MSI Gaming Pro Carbon, Hell of a sexy mobo.

I was going to do a WC build for the 1800X but ended up selling the rad, Pump, Block etc.... to a workmate as I'll be getting the EVGA AIO kit for the 1080 Ti but modding it to remove all EVGA branding ^_^

 

[NeverBackDown]

Yeah get rid of that EVGA branding.. and Corsair stuff while you are at it.

 

[Dicehunter]

Yeah get rid of that EVGA branding.. and Corsair stuff while you are at it.

Nah I like the Corsair stuff ^_^

 

[NeverBackDown]

Nah I like the Corsair stuff ^_^

I just thought I'd try lol